On Christmas Day at 1pm, LBC broadcast a 2 hour Call Clegg Christmas Special which had been recorded at Great Ormond Street Hospital. He spent time visiting patients and then took questions from staff and patients in the hospital’s education centre.

I had it on in the background while I was cooking, so my coverage was a little bit patchy. I love Twitter, but even I can’t manage to tweet while basting the turkey and getting the roast potatoes sorted.

It had absolutely the right tone for a Christmas Day episode. Nick was his usual, relaxed, normal self. There were lots of fun moments. My favourite was when he referred to Nick Ferrari as Old Nick, one of Satan’s alter egos. When asked about which languages he spoke, he told a story of how he and his siblings were in a lift slagging off one of their fellow passengers in Dutch – only to have him turn round and tell them, in Dutch, that he understood every word.

The bit that was trailed in the media was his passion for kickboxing and how he’d asked Miriam to get him boxing gloves for Christmas. He said that he sometimes imagined people while kickboxing, but that they would remain nameless.

He was asked some policy questions too and took a pretty consensual approach. He said that it was up to all parties to work out a solution to housing because we needed more houses to be built.

He was asked how he persuaded people round to his point of view. After a bit of self-deprecating “do I?” jokey stuff, he gave an answer that was very much in keeping with the spirit of Mark Valladares’ article from yesterday. He said that he tried to use humour to illustrate his point and to stick to the facts rather than attack the person. He did admit, though that he sometimes made an exception for Ed Balls.

I found the part where he was talking to the Intensive Care nurses particularly moving. I have had to spend time visiting in an ICU in my life and I was so impressed with the nurses. Their nursing skills had to be top notch to understand all the complexities of any given situation, but they were also so compassionate and understanding towards the visitors who were going through all manner of hell. He asked how they coped with their job and they said that they tended to get the emotions out on some everyday event at home, like losing hair straighteners.

Sadly, LBC don’t seem to have put this episode up on their website, so all I can offer you is my very brief collection of tweets. Feel free to pile in with some more snippets from the show if you listened to it.

But to be honest I think what this is about is what about those kids who aren’t lucky enough to have, I don’t know, families or parents who can help or can try and help them, who just don’t have the contacts, who don’t have the support they need to live out their dreams….

Nick Clegg sounded very cheery as he introduced his weekly LBC phone-in today. Maybe it’s the thought of two weeks away from the rough and tumble of Parliament, or waking up to a basketful of chocolate eggs on Sunday, but he certainly seemed in good form.

I have a long held obsession that if politicians concentrated their minds and sorted out housing, we’d all be a lot happier. It’s one of the things people care most about, unsurprisingly. Imagine how you’d feel if the roof over your head was threatened. Imagine the uncertainty, being forced to rely on the homelessness provision …

We might not have blamed Nick Clegg if he’d stayed under the duvet with a detective novel rather than turn up for his weekly Call Clegg session on LBC. Our leader is not one to duck out of things, though, and deserves respect for not hiding away and allowing himself to be quizzed on live radio. Clearly he was going to be asked about the allegations surrounding Lord Rennard (which the peer strenuously denies) and what he had done about them.

For the first time he acknowledged that although the main reason for the former Chief Executive’s resignation was health, this …

I wondered if the Tories might try and turn up the heat on Nick on today’s LBC Call Clegg now that the starting gun has been fired for the Eastleigh by-election just 3 weeks from today.

I wasn’t expecting the unmistakeable tones of “Boris from Islington” telling Nick to get ministers out of their cars and onto bikes, and get some investment into infrastructure.

Sadly, the London Mayor (for it was he) didn’t quite have the guts to actually talk to Nick live. He’d pre-recorded his question. Nick lobbed the ball firmly back into Boris’ gob by asking him if he were …

Starting on Thursday 10th January at 9.00am, Call Clegg will be the first time a senior member of Government has agreed to be challenged by listeners every week about the big decisions being made in Downing Street.

Every Thursday morning for half-an-hour, the Deputy Prime Minister will go head-to-head with LBC 97.3 breakfast host Nick Ferrari and his listeners, who will be able to call, email, text or tweet Nick Clegg directly with their questions.

Mr Clegg said: “I’m doing this because I don’t think politicians get to hear enough from people directly. You can’t do the right